


Risk Management

by glorious_spoon



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Soulmates, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24041431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Later, Ward will remember things like risk management and cost-benefit analysis and how generally speaking trusting mysterious old women that he meets in strange pockets of reality has historically not gone that well for him. Right now, though, Danny is dying under his hands andconsequencesare the last thing on his mind.
Relationships: Ward Meachum & Danny Rand
Comments: 12
Kudos: 36
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	Risk Management

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lake (beyond_belief)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/gifts).



> A treat fic for **Lake** , for the prompt _Soulbonding is the only way for A to save severely injured B's life._
> 
> This is a gen take on the prompt, although it could probably be read as pre-slash if one were so inclined.

“Do you consent to the bond?” the priestess asks as she sets out the pots of ink. “It will—”

She looks like she’s going to keep talking for some time, time that they definitely _do not have_ , so Ward interrupts, “Yes, yeah, I consent to it, whatever, just do it already.”

Later, he’ll think that he probably should have let her finish. Later, he’ll remember things like risk management and cost-benefit analysis and how generally speaking trusting mysterious old women that he meets in strange pockets of reality has historically not gone that well for him. Even if Danny said she could be trusted. Especially then, maybe. Danny has the self-preservation instincts of a suicidal lemming, hence their current situation.

Danny is ice-pale and still and blood bubbles from his mouth with every dragging breath, his eyes open but vague, fixed on some far-distant point. He’s cold beneath Ward’s hands when the priestess guides him to set his palms over Danny’s heart, and in that moment _consequences_ are the last thing on Ward's mind.

“So, how long is this going to—” he starts to say, then stops. The other priestesses—acolytes, maybe, they’re younger and more nervous looking—have started painting some pattern over the backs of his hands and Danny’s bare, bleeding chest. “Hey, be careful. That stuff doesn’t look sterile to me.”

They ignore him. He watches like a hawk, but while the designs loop over and around the bloody wounds, they don’t seem to actually be painting over them. The ink is cool when it first touches his skin, but it warms quickly. Then keeps warming, until the lines feel like they’re searing him, traced with liquid fire. Ward starts to pull back instinctively, and the priestess’s hand clamps down on his elbow with startling strength.

“If you break it now, the bond will snap.”

“What happens then,” Ward wheezes. It _hurts_. It feels like his hands are wrapped in red-hot wire; Danny doesn’t react at all, and Ward half-hopes that he’s too far gone to feel it and half-doesn’t, because if Danny is that far gone that might mean there’s no getting him back at all.

“He’s already weakened. He’ll probably die,” the priestess says calmly, and turns back to her work.

Ward grits his teeth, presses the pads of his fingers into Danny’s chilly skin, and doesn’t move. He’s still kneeling there like that when the lines flare with sudden blazing light, and an instant later a tide of agony rises up to swallow him whole.

* * *

He wakes on some soft horizontal surface to the smell of tea brewing and the sound of a hushed and vehement argument going on somewhere to his left. It takes him a while to sort out what’s going on, to drag his mind up toward the surface of consciousness enough to realize that one of the voices belongs to Danny. Danny is okay, or okay enough to argue at least, and he should be—

— _torn open by a creature made of smoke and fire with claws that were all too real_ —

“—was asked, and he accepted the bond, Iron Fist.”

“First of all, nobody asked me, and second, he obviously didn’t understand what that _meant_ ,” Danny retorts in a strained and furious voice. There’s a surge of—

— _something_ —

Ward comes the rest of the way awake with a jolt. He’s in a wide, low bed in a room that’s lit only by a low fire in the far corner, a sharp tinge of smoke in the air to go along with the smell of tea. Danny is sitting cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, arguing in hissed tones with the red-clad priestess. He looks wan and hunched, his bare chest swathed in bandages, but he’s awake and alive and the rush of relief that goes through Ward at the sight leaves him a little lightheaded.

On the other side of the room, Danny sways suddenly, then turns to look at him.

“Ward,” he says, blinking.

Ward pushes himself upright. His chest feels like he’s cracked a few ribs, a sensation he’s unfortunately familiar with, and his vision grays out for a moment when he finally manages to sit up. He shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut, then stares at Danny, who stares back at him with wide eyes and an expression he can’t understand at all. There’s a bubble of something in his chest, an ache that has nothing to do with his injured ribs. “Uh. What the hell happened?”

“Are you okay?” Danny asks, instead of answering.

“Am _I_ okay?” Ward retorts, because his memory is starting to come back, and _Danny_ is definitely not the person who should be asking that question. “Did you seriously just ask if _I’m_ okay after you got literally gutted by some imaginary shadow-monster?”

That aching twinge increases, then subsides. Danny sighs, massaging his temples in an absent, self-soothing kind of way. “It wasn’t imaginary.”

“Obviously,” Ward retorts. “Considering what it did to you. So are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Danny says. “I’m fine. Thanks to you.”

“So it worked, then.”

“ _Yeah_ , it worked,” Danny says, sounding incredulous. Ward feels his hands twitch into fists on his knees, that disorienting rush overwhelming him again. He sways in place, and Danny says, “Shit, sorry, sorry, I’m just—”

“He lacks the mental discipline you’ve studied,” the old priestess says to Danny, leaning to pour tea into three cups. She sets down the teapot, then sits back with one cup cradled between her palms and surveys Ward with a thoughtful look. “His mind is weak and easily overwhelmed.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Ward retorts, stung.

Danny makes a strange noise, and Ward has the sudden, inexplicable urge to crack up laughing. He lets out a snort, then stops, because Danny is staring at him, and the priestess is shaking her head with an exasperated look, and that feeling, that sudden burst of unsettled hilarity…

...definitely didn’t come from him.

“You need to control yourself, Iron Fist,” the priestess says, unfolding ponderously out of her seat. She looks between them, then sighs like she’s just utterly disgusted with them both and starts out of the room. She pauses at the doorway. “I’ll give you some time to explain. Maybe he’ll listen to you, now that it’s too late.”

“You should have _made_ him listen,” Danny snaps, and there’s a surge of irritation, prickling and strange. Ward brings his hands up to his ears like he can block it out like that, which is ridiculous. That unsettled feeling flares again, then subsides, and Danny says. “Okay, okay. I’m calm. We’re fine. It’s fine. I’m sorry, Ward. I’m sorry.”

“What the hell,” Ward says, scrubbing his hands over his face, up into his hair and then back down, then strikes the heels of his hands lightly against his forehead, cheekbones, jaw. He feels like he’s made out of wet clay, like maybe he can smash himself back into the right shape with his bare hands. There’s a horrible kind of suspicion growing in him, one that only gets worse when he drops his hands and sees Danny staring at him with wide blue eyes like a kicked puppy.

“Sorry,” he says again.

“Why the fuck are you apologizing to me,” Ward retorts, raw, and pushes himself off the bed. He manages to stand, to sway through the dizzy lightheaded feeling and make his way slowly across the room. Danny starts to stand, winces, then sinks back onto his cushion like he’s thought better of it. Ward gives him a very dry look and folds himself awkwardly down onto the other cushion. Now that he’s moving, he doesn’t feel quite as bad. There’s just that lingering ache, which is actually less like broken bones and more like… he doesn’t know, exactly. But he has a suspicion.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Danny looks down at his hands. “Yeah.”

“Good. Why are you acting like somebody died?”

“I’m not, I just—” Again that prickle of feeling. It feels like an itch on the inside of his brain.

Probably, he should have actually listened to the priestess last night. Ward leans his elbows against the table and fixes Danny with a look. “Danny.”

“Yeah,” Danny sighs, and picks up his teacup. He spins it in his palms, drinks, then sets it down. The prickle fades. “You should have some. It’s good. And it’s got—”

“Let me guess, healing properties.”

There’s a flash of a smile on Danny’s face. “Yeah. But it really is good.”

The tea tastes like swamp water with heavy undertones of ginger, which does seem to be about Danny’s style. He makes a face and sets it down. “So I’m guessing that the whole—” he waves a hand, vaguely. “Soul-link thing, that’s why I feel like I got kicked in the chest by an elephant?”

“Yeah. Our chi was linked so the injury transferred partly to you. Not all of it, obviously—” Danny indicates his bandaged chest; “but with it spread out between the two of us, the demon’s hold was loosened, so I just had the physical injury to deal with.”

Ward squints at him, parsing that. “So you still got stabbed in the chest, you just weren’t cursed on top of it. And I got some of the curse, hence the fucked-up ribs.”

“Yeah. Essentially.”

“Okay, good.” He sips from his tea again. It really is disgusting, but he’s thirsty as hell and the warmth of it—or, who knows, maybe its mystical medicinal properties—seem to be loosening something in his aching chest a little.

“No,” Danny says. “Not good.”

“You’re alive,” Ward retorts.

“Okay, yeah, but do you understand what you actually did back there?”

“No, not really,” Ward says, and sinks back onto his cushion, wishing it was a chair with a back so he could slump into it. Danny looks comfortable, especially considering the mess that Ward knows is under the bandages, but Danny is also the kind of idiot who voluntarily sleeps on the floor because beds are too soft. “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me, though. And I’m reserving my right to not give a shit, because, again, you’re alive, so it clearly worked.”

“It’s not just a… look, this isn’t something that can be done lightly. Okay? It shouldn’t have even _worked._ ”

“Because I’m weak-minded,” Ward says, dryly.

Danny looks like he’d like to tear his hair out. “No, because it’s a linking of souls—emotions—it’s basically the equivalent to a marriage ceremony here, okay?”

Ward turns that over in his head, considering. “Okay, but not in New York it isn’t, so I fail to see the problem. Besides, it’s not even technically the first time we’ve gotten accidentally married. Remember that time in—”

“This is _not_ the same thing.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Because it’s permanent, Ward!” Danny snaps. Tension bursts through Ward’s chest like he’s been kicked. He flinches, and a moment later the sensation recedes. Danny drags a hand through his hair, visibly getting himself under control. “The bond is permanent. There’s no way to reverse it, we can’t get rid of it, and _you_ don’t have the first fucking clue how to keep my emotions from seeping into yours. Let alone what’ll happen to you the next time I get injured. So, yeah. It’s a problem. Okay?”

“Oh,” Ward says, staring at Danny across the table. “Okay, yeah, that’s a problem.”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Still a better problem than me having to go back to New York and explain to Colleen that I let you die of some energy-eating demonic curse, though.” Of course, he still has to explain to Colleen that he went and accidentally got married to her boyfriend, but—still. That’s a much better problem to have. And this way he can make Danny do the actual explaining while he stays out of punching range.

This way, Danny is alive to do it.

“Seriously,” Danny says. “That’s your takeaway.”

“What can I say? I’m pragmatic.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“That too,” Ward concedes. “Look, we’ll figure out a way out of it—”

“—there _is_ no way out of it, Ward, I literally just told you that—”

“—and in the meantime, you can teach me some of your zen meditation tricks to deal with the whole—” he waves a hand, vaguely illustrative. “ _Weak-minded_ bullshit. As much as we can.”

Danny is eyeing him with a look that’s gentler and more thoughtful than any of the ones he’s had since Ward woke up. Hastily, Ward picks up the tea cup, just for an excuse to look away. “She didn’t mean it like that, you know.”

“Yeah, whatever, I don’t care. Come on, apparently we’re married now,” he says, and feels something in him loosen a little when Danny trades that gentle look for an exasperated glare. “Teach me your kung fu ways.”

“It’s not kung fu, it’s—” Danny breaks off, then sighs and straightens up, getting carefully to his feet. Ward watches as he does, but while Danny is moving uncharacteristically carefully, he doesn’t look like he’s in danger of falling down or passing out or fucking _dying_ , which is an astronomical improvement from yesterday. Danny circles the table, then reaches down to offer Ward a hand up, which Ward eyes like Danny might use it to flip him onto the floor.

Which, okay, is not the kind of thing that Danny would actually do. But still.

“Come on,” Danny says.

“Where are we going?” Ward asks warily.

“The bed.”

“Look, I don’t know what you’re planning, but consummation is definitely _not_ on the table for this particular sham marriage.”

“It’s not a sham, and you’re a dick,” Danny says mildly. The prickle of feeling against Ward’s mind is barely noticeable now, but it seems… more fond than anything else. “My chest hurts too much to lean across the table for as long as this is probably going to take. So sit.”

Ward sits, pulling his legs up under him. Danny settles onto the mattress facing him, much more gracefully even with his injuries. He holds his hands out, palm-up, and Ward tentatively places his own over them. Danny doesn’t try to squeeze back, just holds steady, his warm palms a sturdy resting place.

“For the record,” Ward says, “I actually am sorry about this.”

“Yeah, well, I can think of worse people I could end up accidentally married to,” Danny says.

“There’s a ringing endorsement.”

“Pay attention. We’re going to start with breathing, which means that you’re going to need to fix your posture—not like that,” he adds, as Ward forces himself to straighten up stiffly, sending a twinge of pain through his aching chest and back. “Just… relax a little.”

“I’m constitutionally incapable,” Ward mutters.

“Yeah, I know,” Danny says, and there’s that little prickle of affection again. It withdraws fast, but it leaves an echo of warmth behind, and Ward thinks that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t actually the worst mistake he’s ever made in his life. Although he probably will change his mind if he can feel it the next time Danny gets his ass kicked by ninjas. “Loosen your shoulders and breathe in on my count, okay? We’ll work from there. Now. One… two… three…”

Ward closes his eyes and breathes in on Danny’s slow count.


End file.
